Home Go West, Young Art, Go West American Painting 1865-1934 American Painters - The Older Generation The Meaning of Modernism Isms and Wasms American Art in 1900 American Modernism The Whitney Museum of American Art Modern Art's First Museum The twentieth-century principle of form in art The Beginning of American Modernism American Modern Movements Cubism in England and America Activity in Art with American Subjects Backgrounds in European Art The importance of Gauguin and Van Gogh The importance of Picasso and Braque Munch, The Bridge, Kandinsky, Moreau American Backgrounds The establishment of a professional art Contemporary appreciation tends Early Twentieth Century New Directions since 1913 Max Weber, Maurice Sterne, Abraham Walkowitz, Ben Benn Arthur Dove, Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth Dada and Despair Early 1900s American Artists The Spirit of Research and Significant Form Joseph De Martini, Louis Schanker, De Hirsh Margules Pinoeers of Abstract Art American Abstract Pinoeers American Abstract Artists Art in a Skyscraper Significant Vision The term "significant vision" The Influence of the Oriental Scroll Painters Traditionalists and Modernists American Modern Art - Fantasy American Artists More Artists The Painters Discover America The Painters of America American Modern Artists Regionalism in a Broadening View Regional American Artists Pop Art - Modern American Art Stage Design Sculpture Sculptors More Sculptors Definitions Art and Beauty Modern Painting History of Art   Abstract Art Architecture History Painting Process Picasso	The Whitney Museum of American Art The origins of the Whitney Museum of American Art go back to the first decade of our century and to the beginnings of the realist and modern movements. It was at this time that Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney began her activities in the field of American art. Already embarked on her career as a sculptor, by 1907 Mrs. Whitney had taken a studio in Macdougal Alley in Greenwich Village, then the center of the new forces. Her breadth of mind and of sympathy allied her with the progressives from the first. She was an early friend of Arthur B. Davies and Robert Henri, leaders of the Eight; and when the group held its first exhibition, in 1908, she bought four of the seven pictures that were sold-canvases by Henri, Luks, Lawson, and Shinn, all of which are now in the Whitney Museum collection. She supported the Madison Gallery, which showed liberal artists and where a few exhibitors, including Walt Kuhn and Jerome Myers, hatched the plan for a big independent exhibition that ultimately grew into the Armory Show, and she contributed the decorations of the Armory. She had held informal exhibitions in her studio, and in 1914 she converted the adjoining house at 8 West Eighth Street into a gallery called the Whitney Studio, which gave regular shows of her fellow arttists, especially the young and less known. To assist her, she secured the services of Juliana Force, who was thenceforth associated with all her art activities. Temperamentally, Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Force were entirely different, the former with an innate dignity and reserve that made it distasteful for her to engage in the hurly-burly of art controversies, the latter energetic and dynamic, a born doer and fighter. But they shared certain essential qualities-largeness of vision, generosity, a liking for people, a sense of humor, a respect for the creative artist, and a sympathetic understanding of his problems. For the rest of their lives, they worked together in complete harmony for the advancement of American art. Both of them enjoyed the company of artists, and among their friends in the early days, besides Henri and Davies, were Sloan, Glackens, Du Bois, Speicher, Tucker, Sheeler, and the critic Forbes Watson, all of whom helped to shape their policies. One of Mrs. Whitney's chief interests was the encouragement of new talent. In the spring of 1915, she formed the Friends of the Young Artists, "to give young artists in this country the opportunity to show their work." "The annual exhibitions of party. To many a young artist the Club was a warm, festive place where he could exhibit his work and meet his fellow artists. One-man shows were a leading feature, often several of them held simultaneously in separate galleries. Among the scores of artists who received such shows (frequently their first) at the Club, the Whitney Studio, or their successor, the Whitney Studio Galleries, were Sloan, Lawson, Glackens, Tucker, Du Bois, Sheeler, Hopper, Coleman, Miller, Dasburg, Davis, Stella, Bluemner, Boardman Robinson, Schnakenberg, Marsh, Katherine Schmidt, Mattson, Carl Walters, Nakian, John B. Flannagan, Charles Howard, Fiene, and Curry. In the 1920's, a large proportion of the rising generation of liberals and modernists had their first showing at the Club. Aware that an artist's most crucial problem is selling his work, the Club carried on a continuous campaign to persuade the public to buy the works of living artists, with slogans such as "What Is Home Without a Modern Picture?" No commissions were taken on sales. From almost every show, Mrs. Whitney purchased works for her own collection. Annual members' exhibitions were held from the first, growing in size and quality until they rivaled the big academic shows. From 1924 on, they were circulated to museums in other cities. By this time, the Club was the most active and influential center of liberal art in the country. Outgrowing its original quarters, it moved in 1923 to larger galleries on Eighth Street, next to the Whitney Studio. In the meantime, the Whitney Studio had continued as a separate entity with special activities. In 1920/21, an Overseas Exhibition of American Painting was sent to Venice, London, Sheffield, and Paris, consisting of 115 works by thirty-two artists, all contemporaries except for Eakins, who was represented by six canvases. Of this exhibition, Mrs. Whitney wrote: "To me it has always seemed a good plan for artists working in America to show their work in Europe--the oftener the better." Reversing this international exchange, the Studio held several foreign shows, including twenty recent paintings by Picasso in 1923. Aside from these public activities, Mrs. Whitney contributed in many other ways to the cause of living American art. As a director of the Society of Independent Artists for fifteen years, she made up a large part of its annual deficits. She subsidized The Arts, which under Forbes Watson's able editorship became the leading liberal art magazine of the 1920's, championing American art, particularly that of the younger generation. And many individual artists were helped to go abroad or simply to pay their bills, whenever possible by buying their pictures. By 1928, the Whitney Studio Club, now numbering about four hundred with a waiting list of as many more, had reached an impasse. To enlarge further was impossible; to refuse talented applicants, equally so. And its main purposes had been achieved: Dealers and museums were more hospitable to new talent; the academic monopoly had been broken. In the fall of 1928, the Club announced: "The pioneering work for which the Club was organized has been done. . . . The liberal artists have won the battle which they fought so valiantly, and will celebrate the victory as other regiments fighting for liberty have done--by disbanding." For two seasons, 1928/29 and 1929/30, the Club was replaced by the Whitney Studio Galleries, concentrating on one-man shows of young artists, with more accent on selectivity and beauty of presentation. But this proved only a halfway house; the dealers were making such efforts less necessary. Mrs. Whitney had now come to the conclusion that the greatest need was for a museum of American art, "unhampered by official restrictions, but with the prestige which a museum invariably carries," as Mrs. Force later wrote. At this time, there was no museum devoted entirely to American art, with emphasis on the contemporary; the nearest to this were the Newark Museum, long active in American art and design, and the Phillips Memorial Gallery in Washington and the new Museum of Modern Art, both international in scope. The Addison Gallery of American Art, with interests both historical and contemporary, was in process of formation at this time. The foundation of the Whitney Museum of American Art was publicly announced on January 6, 1930. Mrs. Force was appointed director, with a curatorial staff all of whom, significantly, were artists--Hermon More, curator (later second director of the museum), and Edmund Archer and Karl Free, assistant curators. The buildings at 8, 10, and 12 West Eighth Street were remodeled by the architectural firm of Noel & Miller. The interior, designed by Bruce Buttfield, had an intimacy and a beauty of color and materials quite unlike the cold impersonality of most museums of the time. Mrs. Whitney presented her collection of about five hundred works acquired through the years--probably the largest private collection of contemporary American art--and this was increased by purchasing about a hundred examples of artists not previously or not well represented. The museum opened to the public on November 18, 1931. Although it was new as a museum, the Whitney's guiding principles had been formed by years of experience, and today they remain essentially the same. While never precisely formulated, they might be stated somewhat as follows: The contemporary art of a nation has a special importance for its people, aside from comparisons with the art of the past or of other nations. Of a museum's functions, the most vital is not merely to conserve the past but to play an active part in the creative processes of the present. Contemporary American art is extremely diverse, and this calls for a broad viewpoint, recognizing all creative tendencies from traditional to advanced. A museum should always be open to the new, the young, and the experimental. It should never forget that the artist is the prime mover in all artistic matters; it should support his freedom of expression and respect his individuality. "It would be presumptuous to point out the road upon which art should travel," Hermon More wrote in the museum's first, catalogue. "We look to the artist to lead the way. . . . As a museum we conceive it to be our duty to see that he is not hampered in his progress by lack of sympathy and support. It is not our intention to found a 'school,' our chief concern is with the individual artist." He also decried any narrow nationalistic definition of "American." "In limiting the scope of this museum to American art," he wrote, "we place the emphasis primarily on 'art' and secondarily on 'American.'" In practice, foreign birth or citizenship has never been a consideration, but only the artist's length of residence, past or projected, in the United States. During World War II, distinguished Europeans living in America were welcomed, and a special exhibition was given them. The museum's origins had been unusual. The Whitney Studio Club had been an artists' association conducted on extremely democratic lines. But a museum has broader functions: not only exhibiting art, but collecting, studying, and publicizing it --and always maintaining standards of quality. The Whitney Museum's endeavor has been to carry on these new activities while preserving essentially the same relations with artists as in the past. For a museum of contemporary art, exhibitions are a basic function. An essential feature of the Whitney's program has been the series of large annual shows of works by living artists, each represented by a single example. These annuals have been governed by the principle of "no juries, no prizes" established for the Friends of the Young Artists. In most similar exhibitions, a large proportion of the artists submit their works to a jury drawn from outside. But the Whitney annuals are entirely by invitation, the museum selecting artists and works. This system is based on the belief that the judgment of a staff familiar with present-day art and always on the lookout for new artists is as impartial and reliable as that of changing outside juries; that the system makes it possible to secure important works by leading figures while at the same time recognizing new talents and tendencies; and that it enables the museum to keep a balance between different schools and preserve consistent policies from year to year. The museum does not claim that this is the best method for all institutions, but only that it is the best for it, taking into account its purposes and resources and the enormous volume of contemporary art exhibited in the New York art world. To keep in touch with new artists, there are viewings every month or so to which artists send works for the staff to see. In every annual, a considerable proportion of exhibitors have not previously been represented. Over the years, nearly two thousand artists, from almost every state, have been included. In its annuals, the museum has exemplified its belief in the diversity of contemporary American art by presenting a selection of what it considers the most interesting works by individuals of all schools. Since to err is human, it has preferred to err on the side of inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness. There has been no attempt to present "trends" as such, but since in any period certain trends will be dominant, an objective survey must inevitably reflect this. Through the years, successive trends--the American scene, regionalism, the social school, abstraction in all its forms--have been represented fully, though not exclusively, as their partisans would have preferred. In the 1930's, leftist critics chided the museum for being too art-for-art's-sake and insufficiently Marxist; a generation later, advanced critics deplored the inclusion of representational art, while conservatives complained about the proportion of abstract art. The museum has never awarded prizes or medals, believing that in this age of diversity, to single out a few examples as the first, second, third, or fourth best is not only meaningless, but misleading to the public and unfair to the other exhibitors. Instead of giving prizes, the museum has set aside a fund for purchases. This policy of purchases instead of prizes, which the museum was one of the first to adopt, has had a wide influence. Most works in the annuals are for sale, and sales have increased every year. For many years, the museum charged no commissions on sales, but finding itself almost alone in this respect, it began in 1960 to collect a ten-percent commission, which is devoted to the purchase of works by living artists. Besides the annuals, there have been many other types of exhibitions--of particular periods, subjects, or schools; private collections; regional shows; periodical "Young America" shows. One-man retrospectives have included many prominent living painters and sculptors. American art of the past has been covered by general surveys and by one-man shows of Feke, Earl, Homer, Ryder, Blakelock, Prendergast, and others. To show American art in many aspects and combinations has been the aim. The exhibitions have been accompanied by fullscale catalogues based on original research, which have made substantial contributions to the literature on American art. Most of these exhibitions have been shown later in other museums throughout the country. The Whitney has also given New York showings to American exhibitions organized by other institutions. The museum's permanent collection has grown steadily, and by the end of 1960 numbered 714 paintings; 235 watercolors, gouaches, and pastels; 237 drawings; and 185 pieces of sculpture--a total of 1,371 works. (These figures do not include works which after a number of years have been exchanged or withdrawn. The collection is reviewed periodically, but no work by a living artist is withdrawn except with his agreement. For eleven years, annual shows of prints were held and a sizable collection formed, but this department has not been active since 1943.) Believing that its pictures and sculpture should be seen as widely as possible, the museum has lent them to many exhibitions in this country and abroad, and has circulated special shows drawn from the collection. An average of over four hundred works are lent each year. The collection was originally planned to cover the whole history of American art, and works of the past were acquired, including an outstanding group of primitives gathered by Mrs. Force, who was one of the earliest collectors of American folk art. But in 1949, the trustees decided that it was impossible to complete a historical collection equal to those of older institutions; all works produced prior to 1900 were sold and the proceeds used to increase the purchase fund for contemporary art. Since then, the museum has been devoted primarily to the twentieth century. Historical exhibitions are still held, but the collection is entirely of the present century, and purchases have been almost entirely of living artists. In early years, the museum did not make a practice of accepting gifts, but this policy was changed in 1948; since then there has been a steady increase in donations of both works of art and contributions to the purchase fund. From its foundation, the museum sponsored research and publication in the American field, which was then the most neglected area of art history. In 1942, the museum, in cooperation with thirty museums and college art departments, established the American Art Research Council, to promote research and scholarship, to deal with problems of authenticity, and to record the works of leading artists, past and present. Its governing principle was that research in the contemporary field is as important as in the past, and calls for the same scholarly standards. The museum sponsored definitive books on Eakins and Homer by Lloyd Goodrich, and monographs on twentieth-century artists and themes by him and by John I. H. Baur. Over the years, its publication program on American art has been the most extensive of any institution. In general projects on behalf of American art, the museum has played an active part. When, in the depths of the Depression, in 1933, the Federal government initiated the first governmental art program, the Public Works of Art Project, Mrs. Force was appointed chairman of the largest regional committee, and within twenty-four hours artists were on the Federal payroll producing works for public use. Eventually this region employed over nine hundred artists, a quarter of the national total. The Project's headquarters were at the museum, and the staff helped with administration. The PWAP established many of the policies followed by later governmental projects. In 1948, staff members helped to organize the Committee on Government and Art, the first body formed to deal with problems in this field, and the museum has acted as host to the National Council on the Arts and Government, representing all the arts. Exhibitions have been held in collaboration with governmental agencies, and the museum and its staff have helped to organize shows for circulation abroad by the Department of State, the United States Information Agency, and the American Federation of Arts. In 1935, when the Society of American Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, which included many leading artists, adopted a policy of asking moderate rental fees for the use of members' works in exhibitions, Mrs. Force fought valiantly for the acceptance of the plan by her fellow museum directors, and although it was overwhelmingly rejected, the Whitney was one of the very few museums which paid rental during the year it was asked. More recently, staff members helped to organize the Joint ArtistsMuseums Committee, devoted to the mutual problems of these two basic elements in the art world. The museum is maintained by the income from an endowment by Mrs. Whitney; it receives no funds from the city, has never charged admission, and has no regular membership except the Friends of the Whitney Museum. Its scope, determined by its resources, is clearly defined; it covers American painting, sculpture, and graphic art, but not architecture, design, prints, photography, or the motion picture. The size of its staff does not allow for fullscale departments of education or museum extension, or an art library open to the public. But to the museum and its staff, these limitations are more than compensated for by concentration on one of the most rewarding of all fields--contemporary creation. As a pioneer museum in its field, it has influenced older and larger institutions and has contributed to the phenomenal growth of public interest in American art over the past thirty years. A basic fact about the Whitney is that, just as it grew out of an artists' association, it has continued to grow as a museum. As its activities increased, the Eighth Street building proved insufficient in exhibition space, and in 1939 four new galleries were added, almost doubling the capacity. But within a few years, the need for a new building became apparent, not only for more space but for more modern facilities and a location nearer the art center of New York. Eighth Street had warm associations with the past, but to fulfill its function the museum needed to be closer to the city's exhibition center. At this juncture, in 1949, the trustees of the Museum of Modern Art, aware of the Whitney's needs, offered to donate part of their land on West Fifty-fourth Street. This generous action, due largely to the initiative of John Hay Whitney, chairman of the board of the Museum of Modern Art, Nelson A. Rockefeller, president, and Stephen C. Clark, former chairman of the board, was all the more welcome because entirely voluntary and unexpected. It involved no institutional change; as Flora Whitney Miller, president of the Whitney Museum, said: "Both museums wish to emphasize that this is not in any sense a merger, and that the two institutions will retain their independent existence. Both museums believe that in as broad and varied a field as contemporary American art, a variety of institutional viewpoints is healthy and necessary." The Whitney's field remained American art, that of the Museum of Modern Art the whole international field. Nor did it mean any lessening of the latter's active American program; in the words of John Hay Whitney: "The two institutions will continue their friendly competition in the field of American art." Funds for the new building were generously donated by the Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Trust, a separate entity whose trustees are Mrs. Whitney's three children, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, Flora Whitney Miller, and Barbara Whitney Headley. The architect was Auguste L. Noel, who had remodeled the Eighth Street structure. The decorative style of the interior, by Bruce Buttfield, retained the intimate character of the earlier museum. The exterior was designed in consultation with Philip C. Johnson, then director of the department of architecture and design of the Museum of Modern Art. The building, which opened to the public on October 26, 1954, provided not only greater exhibition space but better light, more flexible galleries (all partitions are movable), and improved storage facilities, which made the collection easily available to students and workers from other museums. The increased space made possible more exhibitions and more frequent showings of the collection; air-conditioning allowed the museum to be open in the summer, which had been impossible downtown; and the position in the heart of Manhattan enabled the museum to reach it much larger public. Attendance immediately increased between three- and four-fold, ranking the museum sixth among New York art museums--a growth especially gratifying since the other institutions cover wider historical and international fields.